You’re honey child to a swarm of bees
Gonna blow right through you like a breeze
Give me one last dance
Well slide down the surface of things

You’re the real thing
Yeah the real thing
You’re the real thing
Even better than the real thing

- U2

Fantasy stories, myths, legends, tall tales, fairy tales, horror, all these have been with us for a very long time. Science fiction, as well, has been with us since Mary Shelley found herself in a bet with Lord Byron about the possibility of writing a new kind of horror, one not grounded in the gothic.* So the presence in our popular culture of stories based in unreality of one form or another is certainly nothing new.

It seems to me that there’s been a lot more of it lately, though. Full story »

There are quite a few celebrations this year of one form or another—the 200th anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine (although that’s not such a hot issue in Britain, outside of Thetford and Lewes); the 350th anniversary of the birth of Henry Purcell (LOTS of concerts all year here in London); the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel (ditto); the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn (ditto); and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mendelssohn (ditto again). But the big celebration all year here has been the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (and, incidentally, the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species). There have been any number of events to commemorate this—new stamps and coins, a blockbuster show (now closed) at the Natural History Museum (and the opening of the new Darwin Centre), and lots and lots of books—it’s been a bonanza for the publishing industry. And any number of shows at smaller museums.
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For 20 years, bureaucrats in Brussels have monitored the curvature and shape of more than 40 types of vegetable and fruit. 

Rule-makers claimed that this protected European consumers from poor quality, but it is hard to argue that a lump on the side of a potato alters its flavour or nutritional value in any way.  A welcome respite came on 1 July 2009, when 36 classes of produce were deregulated.

European risk-aversion is built on the complacency that comes with good fortune. Companies have accepted high taxation, used for social entitlements, in exchange for protectionist agreements.

The credit crisis has exposed an interdependency that confounds unemployment targets, raises prices, and leaves state finances mightily exposed to the experiences of a small number of national champions. Full story »

Hope you’re happy, you Full story »

Results: This was one of those pods where the seed never had a chance. It was nip and tuck the whole way, and in the end ZZ Top eased away for a narrow victory. The numbers: ZZ Top 39%; Pearl Jam 30%; Genesis 16%; #11 Oasis 7%; Garbage 7%; Sheryl Crow 2%. The lil’ ol’ band from Tejas advances to the Great 48.

Our tournament to determine the greatest band of all time now moves to the Budokan region, where one of the most dynamic female rock vocalists in history defends against a pack of competitors that seems guaranteed to spark outrage among the voters. Let the conniptions commence. Full story »

If you stick around in this world long enough, you’ll see and hear things you never imagined. Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about angry atheists. What’s that all about? Anybody who doesn’t believe in God, has obviously never played mumblypeg.

When I was a kid, every guy I knew had a pocketknife. It was an essential part of our wardrobe, an accoutrement that helped us navigate a world that still didn’t have twist-off tops or cable TV. We needed pocketknives for fishing, to cut string, to whittle, and to play mumblypeg. Full story »

There’s been quite a lot of discussion the past several years on what we might refer to as The Future of the Book. Unsurprisingly, virtually all of this relates to the impact of the internet on the fate of the printed page. And while a lot of this discussion has been tedious, as it often is, much of it has been quite good; for example, Roger Darnton’s observations (and the subsequent commentary) in The New York Review of Books, and various discussion elsewhere on the overall impact of, particularly, Google. Few of these discussions, though, have generated the kind of visceral response that the Boston Globe story, about Cushing Academy getting rid of its books and replacing them with eighteen Kindles and a cappuccino machine, has generated.
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One of the best facets of studying myth and religion is the amount of weirdness there is to be found. Some of the weirdness involves people interpreting myth and religion in new (or sometimes old) ways and making connections between the seemingly disparate. Some of the weirdness springs from myth itself, in the way that it mirrors itself across time and culture and the layers that pile one atop the other like archeological strata. This week’s installment will feature both. Better yet, it’s a video so you won’t have to follow my mind chasing tangents.

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Meld the slipperiness of memory with the manic power of pop culture and you’ll get an idea of the lens Rebecca Brown uses to look at the world these days.

Brown’s newest book, American Romances, a collection of eight essays, mixes and matches in surprising ways: Oreo cookies and Gertrude Stein. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Beach Boy Brian Wilson. The Invisible Woman, John Wayne, Felix Mendelssohn, and the God Squad. They’re all in there—along with a lot of Brown herself.

“I’m trying to understand my individual life in the context of other things,” she explains in a phone interview from her Seattle-area home. “Clearly, some of the pieces are very personal. The autobiographical stuff is really autobiographical.”

Brown, who’s taught writing for twenty years, is best known for her novels: The Haunted House, The Last Time I Saw You, The Gifts of the Body, The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary—eleven in all. Her 2003 book Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary, a powerful retelling of her mother’s battle with terminal cancer, provided her the opportunity to explore memoir.

But nothing quite compares to the essay style Brown creates in American Romances. Full story »

Nobody sings the best verses in “This Land is Your Land” anymore. And Labor Day is just a three-day weekend at the end of the summer…except that large numbers of workers will have punched the clock sometime this weekend. They are the ones just scraping by. One of the millions who lost a job in the last year. The single mother who only gets 20 hours a week, but wouldn’t be able to afford child care if she worked forty. The people who earn just enough to hang on working full time, holding on to some hope for the American Dream or pretending that it’s theirs through the wonder of consumer debt. The youth who now find themselves mortgage deep in debt for an education that only helps them qualify as “the unintentionally underemployed”. To say nothing of the immigrants picking produce for pennies, in de facto servitude.

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Last week, the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications released their 2009 “Six America’s” study. The study finds that the U.S. population can be broadly broken up into six different categories that the study’s authors name as follows: Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive. Here’s how the Executive Summary describes each of the six groups:

The Alarmed (18%) are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it. The Concerned (33%) – the largest of the six Americas – are also convinced that global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet engaged the issue personally. Three other Americas – the Cautious (19%), the Disengaged (12%) and the Doubtful (11%) – represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem, and none are actively involved. The final America – the Dismissive (7%) – are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Results: Order is restored, at least for the moment. After a run of three straight upsets, Jimi Hendrix struck a decisive blow for the top seeds, handily defeating a pod headed by The Pretenders. The numbers: #5 Jimi Hendrix 44%; The Pretenders 30%; Foo Fighters 9%; The Eagles 7%; Joy Division 5%; Journey 5%. Jimi moves on the the Great 48.

Our search for the greatest band of all time now slides over to the Hollywood Bowl region and a pod where we frankly have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s headed by #11 seed Oasis, one of the greatest bands of Britpop, but they face a very stiff pool of challengers. Full story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — At New Paradigms Forum, Christopher Ford writes that an attack on our military and commercial satellites “would be no less an act of war than attacking one of our naval vessels on the high seas.” This past spring, he explains, the Obama administration “agreed to Chinese and Russian demands that the U.N. begin discussions on preventing an ‘arms race in outer space’ [by enacting] ‘a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.’”

Great — sounds like it’s of a piece with the president’s disarmament overtures, right? To Ford, it’s not that sample. In fact, “A ‘space weapons ban’ may be an incoherent and perhaps dangerous idea [because] trying to define and prohibit space ‘weaponry,’ [is a] fool’s errand.” Full story »

On Wednesday, September 2, Duke Energy announced that they were withdrawing from membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), an industry group composed of utilities, mining companies, and other companies involved in the mining, transportation, and combustion of coal.

In response, the ACCCE issued a bland statement that didn’t even mention Duke by name. It says, in part:

ACCCE is a broad and diverse coalition, composed of more than 40 members, who are working to advance the public policy dialogue on critical issues relating to energy, environmental, and economic policies. From time to time, individual coalition members may have different perspectives with regard to important policy positions.

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In his most recent collection of poems, Sestets, Charles Wright manages to capture more in six lines than most poets say in volumes.

The volume’s sixty-six poems, six lines each, read like dazzling meditations (believe me, if any poet is capable of such an oxymoron, it’s Wright). The six-line format gives each poem a haiku-like feel, although Wright doesn’t conform to the haiku meter. That sort of constraint would take away from Wright’s rustic charm—which comes across like a contemplative gentleman farmer sitting on the wide, wooden porch of his mountaintop home, looking out across uncut fields of hay toward the sunset at the far side of a valley. He takes a pipe from his mouth, and in a quiet, even voice, delivers a poem.

“There’s no way to describe how the light splays after the storm, under the clouds/Still piled like Armageddon/Back to the west, the northwest, intent on incursion,” he says in “Outscape.” Full story »

Results: It’s been a thoroughly disheartening few days for the favorites, as #9 Steely Dan becomes the third straight seed to bite the dust. The upstarts in this case are Los Lobos, who posted a comfortable win. The numbers: Los Lobos 59%; #9 Steely Dan 29%; Boston 5%; The Jesus and Mary Chain 5%; The Cult 3%; Sweet 0%. Los Lobos advance to the Great 48.

Our search for the greatest band of all time now moves to the head of the Fillmore region, where guitar legend Jimi Hendrix faces down another talent-laced band of challengers. Is the biggest upset of the tournament imminent? Full story »

Off to the Globe Theatre last evening for the new play on Thomas Paine by Trevor Griffiths, A New World. I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment. Part of the problem was the weather—it was absolutely pouring during much of the performance, and, coupled with the Globe’s frequently dodgy acoustics, this made much of the dialog unhearable. Not to mention the loud noise of the pitter-patter on the slickers that the Globe sells cheap in the event of downpours such as this one. The real problem was the play itself—the production values, as always, were great, John Light, who plays Paine, was fine, often stirring, and there was a great bustle much of the time.

The problem was deeper—Griffiths has written a straight history here, but without the philosophic context. We’re told that Paine was a great man, and we hear bits and pieces of his writings, and we see him engaged with both the American and French revolutions. But we don’t get a clue about his seminal importance, or about why Paine changed the world, and for the better. To be fair, Paine had such an eventful life that it’s difficult to get it all in a two and a half hour production. But what was left out was much of the meat, and the key to why Paine was important—one of the most important men who ever lived, in fact. It was still an enjoyable evening at the theatre—but also a frustrating one. If you knew something about Paine, you were probably bothered by what was left out; if you didn’t know much about Paine (which is certainly the case here in the UK), you left the theatre no wiser, really. I almost hate to say this, but this would have been a more interesting play if Tom Stoppard had written it. That way we wold have had endless conversations about the philosophical and political issues that Paine dealt with–and these were intensely important at the time, and still are.
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Dear Congressman Stupak,

You’ve been taking a beating in the local press recently. Your lack of town hall meetings on health care reform during the August recess appears to be unpopular.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t paid a tremendous amount of attention to the health care “debate”. It’s summer. I’m busy. And frankly, i’ve assumed from the start that the final product will be well less than this nation needs. It won’t be a national health care plan, the solution that’s at least 50 years too late already. GM may not have needed to be bailed out/purchased if we had a health care system like every other developed nation, but we all knew that such a system wasn’t a possible result, so why bother getting worked up by whatever result we get?

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I graduated from college in August, 1981 and took a job as an English teacher/assistant football coach at a junior high school in Columbia, Tennessee. You may ask why an English teacher would think he could coach football? I had a plan. I was a fairly decent high school football player in the early 70s, First Team, All Mid-state, a three year letterman, a genuine football fanatic. So, using another English major football coach (Joe Paterno) as my inspiration, I boldly took my place along the sidelines. True, as a player I tended to be more cerebral than reactive. Many times my high school coach would stare at me when I asked to deploy my famous symbolic blitz or offered to confuse the opposing quarterback with a barrage of metaphor. Coach Crabtree just didn’t understand. Full story »